If the tech is as customizable as the trailer indicates, I can see myself enjoying mid-level projection displays. The “turn your whole wall into the TV screen” felt way overkill for my tastes, but all the other levels of projection seemed just fine (even the “half-wall” at :27 in the video looked cool).

I guess the next batch of questions center around feasibility of timeline, price and usability. Could this tech be ready for prime-time by 720 launch, or are we looking at a mid-cycle refresh much like Kinect? I think the tech could turn a lot of heads if were part of the launch feature set, but that leads into problems with pricing. At best we’re looking at integration of Kinect 2.0 and another projector. It doesn’t seem likely the two could be integrated into a single unit. I’m hearing that hand-held projectors are pretty cheap these days, but are they so cheap that it could be included in the box? Seems like it would need to be if it were to get any meaningful 3rd party software support.

Finally, I’m curious about logistics of execution. If I have to mount a small projector to the ceiling, or even hang it off a hook, that simply won’t fly in my house. But I do have a bookcase behind my couch that I could set a small projector on. If it could talk to Xbox via Bluetooth, that would be ace.

So there appears to be a lot of what ifs. It does seem strange that MS would reveal this tech so close to 720s unveiling if they weren’t serious about making it part of the feature set. It’s almost like they’re setting up expectations or something. Then again, it could be tech that is years off. If they push it off (assuming it even gets to mass-production phase) it would keep the initial cost of the base console down.

I’m pretty stoked either way. I’m not a fan on Kinect motion control, but this application feels right up my alley. Like it’s fostering increased immersion but not at the cost of jumping all over the room like a fool.

I think IllumiRoom looks pretty cool. I suspect in real life situations, it may be more of a pain than it is worth. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that is going to be worth shipping with the console, but rather an add-on.

"I suggest we imbibe copious amounts of alcohol and just wait for the inevitable blast wave." - Castiel

It looks like it would be fully capable of working without a TV at all. Why not just remove the TV and face it at a blank wall?

Detail. It's really just eye candy for peripheral vision.

Also, after watching the video at home, yeah, that white box is just a book or something. BUT a friend of mine mentioned this idea... What if the camera/projector was in the controller? Maybe the Kinect could track the controller's position from the TV and process what the projector should emit forward? Jostle the controller too much and the illusion might be broken though.

While interesting, that it's coming from MS Research is probably not an indication this will be in the next XBox. I think that's the same group which did the original Surface table computer and that product never really made it to the mass market. Also, MS is notoriously political and the entertainment division might not care to integrate it.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

It's just good to know that you're already thinking about your FFXV yaoi fanfic.

CPU:
- x64 Architecture
- 8 CPU cores running at 1.6 gigahertz (GHz)
- each CPU thread has its own 32 KB L1 instruction cache and 32 KB L1 data cache
- each module of four CPU cores has a 2 MB L2 cache resulting in a total of 4 MB of L2 cache
- each core has one fully independent hardware thread with no shared execution resources
- each hardware thread can issue two instructions per clock

CPU:
- x64 Architecture
- 8 CPU cores running at 1.6 gigahertz (GHz)
- each CPU thread has its own 32 KB L1 instruction cache and 32 KB L1 data cache
- each module of four CPU cores has a 2 MB L2 cache resulting in a total of 4 MB of L2 cache
- each core has one fully independent hardware thread with no shared execution resources
- each hardware thread can issue two instructions per clock

This is probably the most interesting part of that list. Everything else is just a list of specs. The last two generations featured the console with the better specs finishing second in market share.

Yeah, a thought that just occurred to me is that it seems like a "xbox 2013", a full redesign of the same concept, rather than trying to push into any new areas. Going with off-the-shelf x86 tech should be fairly predictable to know how it works and how to build a system around it (although that might not have been the issue for RROD).

That's just looking at the hardware side of the equation though, not software/controller/accessories.

The premise being that because MS haven't managed to get a consistent profit out of their E+D division that they'll sell Xbox off, as it's a distraction from Windows/Office and competing against the mobile/table flavour of the month.

I think it's a bit of a stretch, but I can see the logic behind the thinking. I've already seen some speculation that in the blink of an eye technologically speaking that tablets will outrun the new consoles as soon as they're launched.

If you read the article they mention Sony and Barnes and Noble as potential buyers. Are those companies in any better shape? Could they afford to outright *buy* XBox? I doubt it.

#1 - I think this idea is preposterous. I don't know what the XBox division looks like on the balance sheet, but at the very least they're in second place financially, no? That has to count for something.

#2 - If this were to be true I wouldn't buy the Barnes and Noble XBox. That would mark my final transition completely to Sony.

#3 - Maybe we are headed to an old-school video game industry crash. Landfills full of "Too Human".

Forbes analyst = Click bait. That site's become a joke. The number of insane predictions I've seen made there in the last year that didn't even come close to fruition would blow your mind. It's BS. Sony's bleeding to death and Microsoft has a long history of taking a long-view look at their divisions but it's Xbox that's going to be sold in a few years? Please. It's trolling for traffic.

To be fair they say "like Sony or B&N", but yes, who's going to buy such a big thing like an Xbox division?

Yeah. I have no numbers in front of me to say this "is" preposterous. Who knows, maybe Barnes and Noble is an empire as the last major book chain left. My guess, though, is that XBox could buy B&N if it were just spun off into its own company.

I often think that we don't pay enough attention to the positive dividends that the Xbox provides MS beyond the direct monetary value of that division. When MS first launched the Xbox, they were the big, oppressive monopoly of a company. Many people here abbreviated Microsoft as M$ with regularity.

Now they've made something that people actually *like*, something that is a source of entertainment and broad usefulness (i.e., for streaming and such). Sure, their overall declining marketshare in the PC world has helped them seem a bit less intimidating, as well, but I think the Xbox brand has gone a long way toward getting many to think of MS in a more positive light while simultaneously infiltrating our living rooms.

For MS that's totally worth any slight distraction the E&D division might be in their other efforts. (And, in fact, it would seem they could learn something from the folks that made the Xbox successful.)